Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Shining - V - Halmstad

Shining's V - Halmstad from 2007 is now available on the Osmose Productions Bandcamp. I have been interested in the album since I read Angry Metal Guy's review. He gave it a 5.0/5.0. and said it was refreshing to hear a band with interesting ideas, raw sound and some serious misanthropy that permeates every chord on this excellently written album.

And yeah, the album lives up to those words. Well produced depressive/progressive black metal featuring Niklas Kvarforth expressive vocals; ranging from black metal croaks to clean singing, often within the same line. And songs that are adorned with emotional solos and just great guitar work all over.

And those songs... Take this description from AllMusic: the infectious, driving riffs launching "Låt Oss Ta Allt Från Varandra" (Let us take everything from each other) ultimately descend towards the depths of despair, as a lonely, mournful piano accompanies a young girl's weeping, before concluding with tolling bells and power chords evocative of Danzig's "Twist of Cain.". On paper this sounds way over the top, but dig into the album and discover that Shining makes it all work.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

A little rant about the Osmose Productions Bandcamp. You can stream the first two tracks from V - Halmstad, both of which are representative of the album. So that's OK. But from all other albums on the Bandcamp, you can only stream the first track. Which is often a shortintro. That is a little lazy I think.

Take a band like Impaled Nazarene with many releases on the Osmose Bandcamp. From what I know they have huge stylistic changes from album to album. Making me listen to a half minute intro track is not going to tell me if I like a particular album or not. And no like, no buy.

Update: Now you can stream the first two songs from each album. A little better but...